Remembering The Trade That Saved Brett Favre And The Packers, 24 Years Later

Late in the 1991 season, both the Green Bay Packers and Brett Favre had lost their way. Favre was a rookie backup quarterback on the Atlanta Falcons, whose head coach Jerry Glanville once famously said it would take a “plane crash” to get him in the game. The Packers were finishing up a season in which they’d finish 4-12, and 20 years in which they had a winning record exactly one time. Both of them needed a little saving, and in honor of Favre’s 47th birthday tomorrow, we’re going to remember how they found salvation together.

In the spring of 1991, Ron Wolf was an assistant in the New York Jets front office, and he had become smitten with the cannon-armed kid from Southern Mississippi. He had Brett Favre as the number one player on his board, but the Jets didn’t have a first-round pick. Even though Favre fell into the second round, Wolf couldn’t swing a deal to trade up for Favre before the Falcons nabbed him at the 33rd pick. The problem was, their coach wanted nothing to do with him.

Despite Glanville’s plane-crash comment (which, yeesh), Favre did see a tiny bit of game action in ’91 — against the 10-0 and eventual Super Bowl champion Washington Redskins: